Hans Ludwig Jacoby, aka Boche, was born in Darmstadt,
Germany, in 1955. He was active as a recording musician
primarily from the mid-1980s until 1991. Beats collects
the most intriguing of his rhythmic experiments.
Many of the 27 tracks on this album — all recorded onto
cassette tape, and none of which have been published
before — were made with equipment purchased from Ho. Turner, who was a close friend.
This edition was meticulously compiled and mastered
by Marc Behrens.

The ever-exciting Entr’acte’s 188th record is a lovingly
recompiled anthology of Boche’s electronic experiments
recorded by the man between the mid-1980s and 1991.
Boche was Hans Ludwig Jacoby, the author of one tape
laconically entitled Tape, which came out back in 1981
on the Animal Art label overseen by German cultural
agitator Marc Behrens. Whoever he was, whatever he
did, it’s criminal how underheard Hans Ludwig Jacoby
has been until now; this record contains material
remastered and sequenced by Behrens that has never
been released before, and it’s whisker-lickingly beautiful.
Always teetering on the line between cunning and cutting
electroacoustic and lusciously intelligent techno, Beats
is a thing of dreams, a glorious succession of expert
progressions of deeply thought-out rhythms, sonorities,
manoeuvres. The true joy to be found here is in the
feedback, all sorts of sexy, knowing, interesting
manipulations of delay, whilst texture is undoubtedly
the most satisfying and most succulent aspect of Boche’s
music. Wet, jagged squelches — dirty but never vulgar —
sit alongside echoed screeches reminiscent of searching
through VHF radio at night, endless walls of insectoid
pattering feedback, and empty space boominess.
Moments of surprise flash up like fireworks: distant
sharp whistles, woodiness, rustiness, whole screams,
voices, conversations wrapped in destabilising filters,
zooming in and out of earshot, going pure brilliant white
and then hovering in the dark damp grain again.
Boche’s Beats is the kind of thing that makes you glad
music’s recorded and stored on physical format so it can
be found again. Sincerely and solemnly fantastic.